Branding a business should not only focus on a marketing strategy. Once you’ve selected your logo, ordered your letter head, and figured out an elevator-pitch it does not mean your job is done. Aside from maintaining your brand, there are a few important business strategies that do influence your brand, even though they are not often part of a marketing strategy.
Brand Your Promises
When you run a business, you are bound to make some form of promises to your (potential) customers. Whether you offer a rebate, better service, or a particular product, if you make a statement you owe it to your brand to stick to it. Even if it costs you a little extra money to keep these promises, it will pay off in the form of long term customers.
Recently, I’ve run into a problem in this area with a major phone provider. I contacted their business services department because I was interested in switching providers. The company I am switching to is rumored to be the best of all wireless-evils available in Canada, and being thoroughly fed up with the level of service I’ve been exposed to for the past four years, I decided it was time for a change.
Business services started out promising. I enjoyed speaking to the same rep every time I called in, and I had the option of emailing this individual as well. I felt there was some accountability and was thrilled about having some offers in writing. I preferred this option over dealing with conventional customer service, where every time you call offers and promises are changed depending on the knowledge or whim of the rep on the phone. Besides, regular customer service likely has most of their call center in Bangalore anyways. You can say what you like about outsourcing, but it does not take away my opinion that certain services do suffer dramatically when you expose part of a business to substandard language skills, and enormous cultural differences.
To make a long story short, my initial contact with my new wireless provider amounted to a spontaneous $100 rebate offer for switching, and a few other perks. No expiry date was mentioned in the email offering this. However, when I was ready to go ahead and purchase a $400 phone, as well as commit to a three year plan, the $100 rebate was suddenly no longer available. Allegedly, there was some mystical expiry date to the offer, which was never mentioned. Instead of fighting the issue, I decided to first call conventional customer service. After two failed attempts, where someone claimed a voice plan I wanted is not available, I finally spoke to someone within North America, who was competent enough to honor the $100 rebate after all. Of course I had to close the deal before it would be gone again by the next time I’d call.
How Service Reflects on Your Brand
What does this story tell you about this company’s brand? The start was promising, but then the business services rep started to crawl back on her initial offers, in a rather rude way too, I was less than impressed. Even if there would have been an expiry date, the fact she forgot to mention it means the company should take responsibility for the promise. Simply saying to a potential customer that she ‘lost a great opportunity already’ is not the most productive statement to reign in another three-year contract.
Although you may think customer service is not part of your brand, it actually should be. Consistency, keeping promises and maintaining great service reflects on your brand. In this case, I was dealing with Canada’s “most reliable network”. Take a guess at how reliable I still think this company is..
